High school lockers

I have approximately zero interest in writing these days but folks keep visiting so I suppose I should force myself, just to keep the proverbial juices flowing. That’s what we do, right? Us creative types? We force ourselves to do and move and experience and express in the ever-waning hope that, when we push beyond the present block, everything will eventually feel like it fits again and in a way that makes sense. My mind is still overflowing with rivers and streams of thoughts that cascade over the cliffs, plummeting to depths of which I can never see the bottom. It’s just that the babbling has all become a bit like white noise, sometimes too close and too loud but mostly relegated to the background of my somewhat less sleepless nights as of late.

The novelty of medication has worn off. It is still working, in a sense, of course. Last week, I experienced my first twinge of regret that I could not feel as much. After initiating a second follow-up request over three weeks, I learned that I did not even move beyond an initial phone interview for a job a really wanted; a dream job, honestly. I’ve learned not to let myself dream too much or get very invested or have any expectations when it comes to jobs. After more than 100 (200?) applications, barely more than a handful of interviews, and only two second interviews in more than two years of applying, the job search has become as futile and damaging to my self worth as dating. The chances of landing one where you aren’t settling or sacrificing part of your soul are about the same, in my experience.

Anyway, in all those many, many applications and thoughtful cover letters, there have been less than ten that I have been truly excited about. This was not only one of those elusive few but very easily the top one. There could not be more than a dozen people in the entire country who are more uniquely qualified for the role and probably none in my city, and yet, I did not even get to the second round. I have a hunch that sits like a rock in my stomach that it’s because I felt a bit too comfortable during the phone screening with a woman who knows and admires all of the same phenoms in DC education that I do and shares my often firy inability to accept inequity or injustice in any form, especially when it comes to students and representation (or former lovers masquerading as good guys). When she asked a direct question about my current manager though, I almost certainly did not respond in the most artful or calculated way I could have. I should have. I am just not built that way. Even when I try, there is no way that whomever I am speaking to doesn’t know what I think — I am too expressive, too honest, too radically candid, too comfortable being exactly who I am. I’ve worked so hard to find my voice; I cannot bear to whisper now. If that wasn’t it, then it has to be some nepotistic, DC-billionaires’-club kind of thing because I should have been a lock. For as much as my self confidence and self worth have taken a walloping over the past year or so, I have zero hestation in saying or believing that last bold statement.

It could also be because I made too much of an issue about how their organization is mostly white (men) and it isn’t representative of the population they purport to serve so, as a white woman, I may have effectively torpedoed my own candidacy. I am trying to convince myself that was the reason because I am okay with that one. I suppose we shall see when the person they do hire is finally named.

That said, I found out and I just did not feel a damned thing. I was theoretically disappointed, obviously. I still am. But I did not feel it. I haven’t even told but one other person and that’s only because this person was actually thoughtful enough to send a message to check in on me this weekend. That night though, I was thinking about how that was my last iron in the proverbial fire and, with my ridiculously horrible manager coming back from maternity leave next week, I should have felt pretty fucking hopeless. I cognitively knew this but I couldn’t feel one way or the other about it.

And that felt really … weird.

I shit you not, I looked up the movie “Beaches” on YouTube, just to find the part where Bette Midler’s character learns about her best friend dying, scenes from their childhood flash, all while Bette is belting “Wind Beneath My Wings,” in the background. I just wanted to cry. I wanted to feel. More than that, I wanted to wallow and sulk. So I summoned Bette and I did! It was weirdly comforting to know that I haven’t become a complete automaton.

This morning, in our last team meeting before my inept and insecure wench of a boss returns, the icebreaker opener was, “What was in your high school locker?” My teammates all shared about the decorations they had in theirs: a shrine to Tupac with fake flower garlands, a daily journal pad that one of them wrote in throughout every day with the two friends who shared hers, the dance outfits and ballet slippers stuffed into the bottom of another instead of books, pictures of 80s and 90s hip-hop and pop stars, make-up and perfume and all kinds of girly shit.

I wanted to go first because I knew mine was going to fall flat but they were all too excited to share and their energy was contagious so I just sat back and smiled and laughed with them until my cheeks hurt, until they forced me to go at the end. I said that I honestly didn’t think I ever had anything in my locker, if I even used it. I remember sharing one in the intermediate high (9th & 10th grade) with another girl but I can’t remember a single thing about it except that it was kind of near my cousin, Amy’s, and she was kind of popular and not very nice to me.

I didn’t share that last part because, honestly, no one wants or needs to know that I was a shadow in school, from elementary through half of college. I had some friends but my cousin, Shawn, was my best friend and he drove me to and from school every day. We were farm kids and we didn’t really give a shit about the groups that weren’t ours or people that we weren’t friends with. We didn’t have the same friends and that was okay with both of us. We had each other, mostly. I was not social and I got picked on in pretty much every grade I can remember. On the bus in elementary school, in class in junior high, the boy behind me used to spit on my back and in my hair in homeroom in high school, prank calls at my house that seemed to never stop, etc. I was really shy and quiet and smart. I was objectively cute but I think people thought I was stuck up … or an easy target … both?

I just don’t have many fond memories of school at all, and trying to think about my locker this morning was almost comical. Like, of all the many, many insignficant things that take up room in my cavernous memory, my locker is not one of them.

The funny thing is though, I have a recurring dream about high school that revolves around my locker. I have no idea why but on a fairly regular basis, I dream that I am in my high school, which was a huge campus (1200 kids for just the 11th & 12th grades), and I am at my locker and no one is around because I am late for class. My locker was in one of the buildings farthest from the main entrance and I can picture the hallway, the smell, the light through the walls of windows on either side, and I can almost remember the exact locker in a certain row. But I can never remember the combination in the dream or, if it’s already open when I’m there, I can never find the notebook I need. I am panicking because I can’t find my class schedule and cell phones/smart phones didn’t exist then to look it up. I always take the same set of stairs, there are always people going down while I’m going up, and I am always trying to get to one of three classes, Biology, Calc, and something else. But I can never remember which one I have at that time because I don’t know what day it is and, in the dream, I haven’t gone to class in so long that if I do make it to the right one, I am definitely late, my desk is the only empty one, and the teacher and the entire class stop talking and watch me walk to my desk. Sometimes it’s because I’m in the wrong class for that day and sometimes the teacher makes some snide comment about how it’s nice of me to show up. The irony is, I never missed a g/God damned day of high school, not even for senior skip day. I don’t even know if there was one — I was that cool.

Ah, high school.

Music for the Mood:

Baba O’Riley – The Who

Teenage Dirtbag – Wheatus

“It’s only teenage wasteland.”